Hailing the Ferry, oil on canvas painting by Daniel Ridgway Knight, 1888, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Medieval manuscripts resisted obsolescence. Made by highly specialised craftspeople (scribes, illuminators, book binders) with labour-intensive processes using exclusive and sometimes exotic materials (parchment made from dozens or hundreds of skins, inks and paints made from prized minerals, animals and plants), books were expensive and built to last. They usually outlived their owners. Rather than discard them when they were superseded, book owners found ways to update, amend and upcycle books or book parts.

These activities accelerated in the fifteenth century. Most manuscripts made before 1390 were bespoke and made for a particular client, but those made after 1390 (especially books of hours) were increasingly made for an open market, in which the producer was not in direct contact with the buyer. Increased efficiency led to more generic products, which owners were motivated to personalise. It also led to more blank parchment in the book, for example, the backs of inserted miniatures and the blanks ends of textual components. Book buyers of the late fourteenth and throughout the fifteenth century still held onto the old connotations of manuscripts—that they were custom-made luxury items—even when the production had become impersonal.

Owners consequently purchased books made for an open market and then personalised them, filling in the blank spaces, and even adding more components later. This would give them an affordable product, but one that still smacked of luxury and met their individual needs. They kept older books in circulation by amending them, attached items to generic books to make them more relevant and valuable, and added new prayers with escalating indulgences as the culture of salvation shifted.

From: M Rudy, Kathryn. Piety in pieces: how medieval readers customized their manuscripts. Open Book Publishers, 2016.

Image: Parchment diptych with the measurements of Christ’s length and side wound, inserted into a French book of hours. Paisley, Renfrew District Museum and Art Gallery, Ms. 1, fol. 13–14 forming a diptych. Photo © Author, CC BY 4.0.

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This week, writers including Andrew O'Hagan, Rose Tremain, Ayobami Adebayo and Marian Keyes select their most memorable sporting moments; and we drop in on the European Writers' Festival at the British Library.

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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Our series on the great political novels and plays resumes with George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1872), which has so much going on that it needs two episodes to unpack it. In this episode David discusses the significance of the book being set in 1829-32 and the reasons why Nietzsche was so wrong to characterise it as a moralistic tale. Plus he explains why a book about personal relationships is also a deeply political novel.

To get two bonus episodes from our recent Bad Ideas series – on Email and VAR – sign up now to PPF+ and enjoy ad-free listening as well www.ppfideas.com

Next time: Middlemarch (part 2) on marriage, hypocrisy, guilt and redemption.

Coming soon on the Great Political Fictions: Phineas Redux, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Time Machine, Mother Courage and her Children, and much more.

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Após o sucesso de seu álbum homônimo de estreia em 2021, Bebé retorna com um novo e aguardado projeto: "Salve-se!". Esta obra, que se destaca pela profundidade emocional e autenticidade, apresenta uma combinação única de pop eletrônico com influências de indie, R&B, pagode, funk e trap. "Salve-se!" transmite narrativas complexas, refletindo o crescimento e a maturidade artística de Bebé. Leia mais (05/21/2024 - 20h04)

The world’s atomic watchdog fears a terrifying regional arms race

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In this episode, Stacy Holtz, Gary Kovar and Birgit Pauli-Haack discuss NASA’s new website – the switch to WordPress and Block Editor, the scale of the project, the block and theme development, design and migration. Show Notes / Transcript Show Notes Transcript Birgit Pauli-Haack: Hello, and welcome to our hundredth episode of the Gutenberg Changelog […]

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• If you can read this, you are not a machine. [Gittit Szwarc]
• Clay PCB. [Patrícia J. Reis] “Our Clay PCB is not made of plastic but instead clay collected from the forest in Austria that was carefully prepared and modeled in a shape of a tile with an imprinted circuit, and later fired with wood in the nature. Our conductive tracks use urban-mined silver and all components are re-used from old electronic devices.” Via Roel Roscam Abbing.
• The revenge of the home page. [New Yorker] “As social networks become less reliable distributors of the news, consumers of digital journalism are seeking out an older form of online real estate.” Via Roel Roscam Abbing.
• The ‘boring phone’: stressed-out gen Z ditch smartphones for dumbphones. [The Guardian] “The problem with offlining is that the world is increasingly difficult for people without a smartphone.”
• This Irresistible Revolution. [The Point Magazine] “One of the ways that I “get offline” in the morning is by running—after which I upload my run to Strava.” Via Arts&Letters Daily.
• Ben Grosser, artist and creator of Minus, the opposite of Facebook. [Techtonic podcast]
• 2024 Small File Media Festival: Call for Work. Deadline: 15 June.

For our last episode in this series David is joined by Helen Lewis to discuss Mesmerism – aka animal magnetism – an eighteenth-century method of hypnosis for which great medical benefits were claimed. Was its originator, Franz Mesmer, a charlatan or a healer? Was his movement science or religion or something in between? And what can it tell us about twenty-first century phenomena from online social contagion to hypnotherapy? 

To get two bonus Bad Ideas episodes – on Email and VAR – sign up now to PPF+, where you will also get all our past and future bonus episodes plus ad-free listening www.ppfieas.com 

Coming next: The Great Political Fictions resumes with Middlemarch, the greatest of them all.

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Em dezembro de 2019, ocorreu o baile funk DZ7 na comunidade de Paraisópolis, São Paulo, com um público estimado entre 5 mil e 8 mil pessoas. Durante o evento, uma ação da polícia militar, conhecida como "Operação Pancadão", que visava reprimir festas de baile funk pela cidade, resultou na morte de nove jovens.

Na época, a polícia justificou a operação violenta alegando que estavam perseguindo suspeitos que teriam entrado na festa em motos e que depois teriam sido atacados pela multidão com pedras e garrafas. Inicialmente, a polícia divulgou que a morte dos adolescentes foi por pisoteamento, no que seria uma fatalidade decorrente da confusão.N

o entanto, a Defensoria Pública, juntamente com o Centro de Antropologia e Arqueologia Forense da Universidade Federal de São Paulo (CAAF - Unifesp) reconstitui a sequência de acontecimentos da noite em um trabalho minucioso de análise que acabou desconstruindo a versão inicial da PM. O relatório revelou que o que ocorreu foi um cerco aos participantes do baile. Graças a este relatório, o Ministério Público de São Paulo indiciou 13 policiais, 12 por homicídio doloso qualificado e por expor pessoas ao perigo ao soltar explosivos.

O Pauta conversa com a antropóloga e pesquisadora Desirée Azevedo, que conta detalhes sobre o trabalho realizado e discute as controvérsias envolvidas no caso. A criminalização da cultura periférica negra e a metodologia de violência policial são elementos que compõem o cenário do massacre de Paraisópolis e outras operações violentas das polícias em territórios periféricos. O programa também conta com a participação de Maria Cristina Quirino, mãe de Denys Henrique Quirino, morto aos 16 anos neste caso que não pode ser esquecido. 


Saiba que você pode ser aliado da Agência Pública e colaborar com esse trabalho. Saiba mais em apoie.apublica.org ou faça um pix de qualquer valor para contato@apublica.org.
Contamos com seu apoio!

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The Ironwood bicycle is a wooden framed bike that people could make themselves with commonly available materials. It has a laminated wooden frame and fork to which standard bicycle components are bolted. The frame can be made with basic carpentry and metalwork skills, without the need for welding or soldering. The design is intended for small scale bicycle production that would support local employment as an alternative to importing bicycles from around the world. More: http://www.ironwoodbicycle.com.

But China’s bullying of Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines risks an explosion

This week, we look at the busy afterlives of two canonical characters: Nathalie Olah on Tom Ripley and Emelyne Godfrey on Sherlock Holmes.

'Ripley', on Netflix

'The Worlds of Sherlock Holmes: The inspiration behind the world’s greatest detective', by Andrew Lycett

Produced by Charlotte Pardy

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For our penultimate episode in this series David talks to Kathleen Stock about Roland Barthes’s idea of the Death of the Author (1967). Once very fashionable, the notion that readers not writers are the arbiters of what a text means has had a long and sometimes painful afterlife. As well as exploring its curious appeal and its persistent blindspots, Kathleen discusses her personal experience of how it can go wrong.

Two bonus Bad Ideas episodes for PPF+ subscribers – on Email and VAR – will be available very soon. Sign up now and get ad-free listening too! www.ppfideas.com

Coming Next: Helen Lewis on Mesmerism

Coming Soon: The Great Political Fictions Part 2, starting with Middlemarch

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Next week 21 May LTM does a talk in Brussels, reflecting on the work of architect Louise Morin in gallery “et al.” It is the last day you can see her exhibition.

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Em outubro de 2023, o economista e professor da universidade de Chicago Leonardo Bursztyn publicou um artigo que deve mudar a forma como economistas enxergam as redes sociais.

No estudo, resultado de um experimento de campo feito em parceria com dois colegas, Bursztyn conseguiu estipular o real valor que jovens universitários norte americanos dão a duas redes sociais: o Instagram e o Tik Tok. Os resultados surpreenderam até os criadores do estudo.

Neste episódio de podcast, mergulhamos nas descobertas do Leonardo Bursztyn, analisamos por que as redes são tão viciantes e respondemos a pergunta que tantos humanos fazem todos os dias: por que continuamos nas redes sociais?

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⁠14: Seu cérebro no Insta

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Mergulhe mais fundo

⁠When Product Markets Become Collective Traps: The Case of Social Media ⁠

Entrevistados do episódio

⁠Lonardo Bursztyn⁠

Economista, professor da universidade de Chicago, editor do Journal of Political Economy, fundador e diretor do Normal Lab.

⁠Carla Cavalheiro Moura⁠

Psicóloga, coordenadora do Grupo de Dependências Tecnológicas do Programa Ambulatorial Integrado dos Transtornos do Impulso (Pro AMITI), do Instituto de Psiquiatria, do Hospital das Clínicas (HCFMUSP).

Ficha técnica

Produção e apoio de edição: Matheus Marcolino.

Mixagem de som: Vitor Coroa.

Trilha sonora tema: Paulo Gama.

Design das capas dos aplicativos e do site: Cláudia Furnari.

Direção, roteiro e edição: Tomás Chiaverini

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